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All-Time NBA Christmas Day Scoring Leaders: Where LeBron James, Kevin Durant Rank
The NBA's Christmas tradition rages on once again in 2025, with a selection of exciting matchups around the league from the afternoon into the wee hours of the night. It is the unofficial arrival of the NBA season.
Since the league generally tries to schedule some of its most popular stars and exciting matchups on the holiday, it makes for an interesting date to look at from a statistical lens. And what better stat to look at than points scored?
Below, we'll take a look at the five highest-scoring players on Christmas, and then a full list of the top 20 of all-time. It's a function of both longevity, scheduling, and prolificness, with the final list being a mix of some of the league's best stars from a number of different eras. A special thanks to Stathead's Index for research.
1. LeBron James
LeBron James leads the NBA in Christmas scoring with 507 points, also leading the way in games played. 2025 will mark his 20th game played on Christmas, playing the traditional game in all but three seasons of his career. James is 11-1 going into the Lakers' 2025 Christmas Day game. Something to look for? While he's third in double-doubles with eight on Christmas, he's only recorded one Christmas triple-double (2010) in his career.
2. Kobe Bryant
A hundred and some points behind James is the late Kobe Bryant, who scored 395 points on Dec. 25 games by the end of his NBA career. Bryant is also firmly in the games played leaderboards with 16 holiday classics. His highlight was a 2004 42-point game against the Heat that culminated in a 104-102 overtime loss.
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3. Oscar Robertson
Oscar Robertson, one of the game's excellent stat stuffers, made his mark on the holiday classic with 377 points scored on Christmas. Robertson had seven games on Christmas with 35 points or more scored. Perhaps more impressively, he had four triple-doubles on Christmas throughout his career, the most of any player (Russell Westbrook has logged two, the only other player to log more than one).
4. Kevin Durant
Look no further than Kevin Durant's 2010 Christmas performance to find out just how special this day can be. Durant scored 44 points on 14-of-20 shooting (4-of-7 beyond the arc) and added seven rebounds and four assists. That scoring helps put him in fourth place with 342 points, trailing Robertson by 35 going into this year's matchup against the Lakers.
5. Dwyane Wade
Wade is fifth in scoring on the holiday, and the last of all-time players going into the 2025 iteration of the tradition to land above 300 points scored on Christmas (314). Perhaps most impressive about his Christmas games is his record, though, going 10-3 in his 13 games. He authored one of the best individual games in the holiday's history, a 40 point, 4 rebound, 11 assist performance in a blowout win over the Lakers in 2006, he shot 11-of-19 from the field.
All-time NBA Christmas scoring: Top 20
The top 20 going into 2025's games is slightly refreshed. Stephen Curry, Jayson Tatum and Kyrie Irving all cracked the top 20 in recent years, pushing Hal Greer, Bill Sharman, and Wilt Chamberlain out.
Rank | Player | Points |
|---|---|---|
1 | LeBron James | 507 |
2 | Kobe Bryant | 395 |
3 | Oscar Robertson | 377 |
4 | Kevin Durant | 342 |
5 | Dwyane Wade | 314 |
6 | Russell Westbrook | 288 |
7 | James Harden | 273 |
8 | Shaquille O'Neal | 272 |
9 | Dolph Schayes | 239 |
10 | Walt Bellamy | 237 |
11 | Richie Guerin | 232 |
12 | Dick Van Arsdale | 232 |
13 | Bob Cousy | 223 |
14 | Walt Frazier | 204 |
15 | Earl Monroe | 204 |
16 | Carmelo Anthony | 203 |
17 | Kyrie Irving | 199 |
18 | Jayson Tatum | 197 |
19 | Stephen Curry | 194 |
20 | Jerry West | 193 |
An interesting mix of names sits outside of the top 20. Michael Jordan, notably, is not on the list. Neither is Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Some active stars sit outside the top 20 but figure to be candidates to break in in future years, like Jaylen Brown (165 points), Giannis Antetokounmpo (158), Julius Randle (147) and Nikola Jokic (139).
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Josh Wilson is the news director of the Breaking and Trending News team at Sports Illustrated. Before joining SI in 2024, he worked for FanSided in a variety of roles, most recently as senior managing editor of the brand’s flagship site. He has also served as a general manager of Sportscasting, the sports arm of a start-up sports media company, where he oversaw the site’s editorial and business strategy. Wilson has a bachelor’s degree in mass communications from SUNY Cortland and a master’s in accountancy from the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois. He loves a good nonfiction book and enjoys learning and practicing Polish. Wilson lives in Chicago but was raised in upstate New York. He spent most of his life in the Northeast and briefly lived in Poland, where he ate an unhealthy amount of pastries for six months.